Department Of Defense U S

In a strong expression of support for building the next generation of military jets at Palmdale's Plant 42, California's entire congressional delegation has signed a letter asking the Department of Defense to compare production costs there with costs at any other facility. The contract to build the Joint Strike Fighter could be worth up to $750 billion over 25 years and is expected to generate thousands of new jobs in the region where it is built. The Oct.

With two wars raging and an election approaching, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has sent senior civilians at the Pentagon a clear message: Be ready to stick around into a new administration to ensure a smooth hand-over in a time of war. But increasingly, the campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have considered sending a similar message to Gates.

Preparing to leave office after a period of historic change in the American military, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney predicted Monday that his successor will become more conservative as he steps into his new role and cautioned him not to base "long-term national security policy on the assumption that all is well in Moscow." In a wide-ranging farewell interview 17 days before leaving office, Cheney said that his successor, Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says he is working to prepare the Pentagon for the first wartime presidential transition since Vietnam and has asked civilian officials to be prepared to stay on at the request of the next president. Gates, who has served in seven presidential administrations, said transitions had become slower over 25 years, with more and more senior civilian positions remaining vacant for long periods.

When Ehud Tenenbaum was arrested on suspicion of hacking his way into Pentagon and other sensitive computer systems, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was openly admiring of the young Israeli, lauding his skills as "damn good." Netanyahu added that the 18-year-old was "dangerous too." But the Israeli prime minister's praise made an instant celebrity of a young man suspected of leading the most serious attack on the Pentagon's computers and breaking into as many as 700 sites worldwide.

All 23 American prisoners of war captured by Iraqi forces during Operation Desert Storm, including two U.S. servicewomen, were tortured or abused by their captors, a top Defense Department official told U.S. lawmakers Thursday. In several instances, Iraqi interrogators broke bones, perforated eardrums and threatened to shoot or dismember the American prisoners in their custody, Army Col. Bill Jordan said in testimony before Congress' Human Rights Caucus.

The U.S. armed forces have lost more than 100 lives and more than $1 billion in sophisticated aircraft at air shows, flight demonstrations and various publicity events since 1955, an investigation by The Times has disclosed. A list of 115 accidents involving Army, Navy and Air Force aircraft participating in shows and demonstration events was compiled on the basis of more than a dozen inquiries over the past year under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The more than 500,000 U.S. veterans who are likely to die this year will be the first to be guaranteed military honors at their funerals under a Defense Department policy that went into effect Jan. 1. The policy is a reversal for the Pentagon, which has held for years that, although no institution has more interest in honoring veterans, military honor guards are impractical in an era when so many veterans are dying and so many military bases are closing.

A number of medical professionals, who say they've become ill while treating Gulf War veterans, claim the mysterious disease afflicting tens of thousands of soldiers is contagious and could pose a public health threat. Doctors, nurses, laboratory researchers, as well as others who come in casual contact with Gulf War veterans, say they've contracted the same symptoms--fatigue, fever, aches, rashes and respiratory problems--that are generally associated with "Gulf War syndrome."

An American soldier whose death during a ground battle in the Persian Gulf War was described in two front-page articles in The Times was killed not by Iraqi forces, as had been believed, but by a mistaken barrage from a U.S. M1-A1 tank, military officials said Wednesday. Army Specialist Clarence Allen Cash, 20, of Ashland, Ohio, was among the 35 U.S. soldiers now acknowledged by the Defense Department to have been killed during the war by so-called "friendly fire."

Google Inc. found itself at the center of a national security controversy Thursday. The Pentagon banned the Internet giant's digital-mapping vehicles from all military installations after detailed photographs of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio appeared on Google Maps. The Street View feature allows users to zoom in on 360-degree, ground-level views of neighborhoods, landmarks and other places that Google photographs from vehicles with roof-mounted cameras. A message sent to all Defense Department bases and installations late last week warned officials not to allow Google vehicles access.

Boeing Co. demanded immediate answers Tuesday on why it lost a $35-billion contract for refueling tankers to Northrop Grumman Corp. and its European partner EADS, as Boeing backers in Congress threatened to hold up funding for the deal. Pentagon acquisition chief John Young defended the contract award, saying that the Defense Department followed procedures carefully and that there was no obvious reason for the loser to protest the decision. But he said that he had urged the Air Force to brief Boeing "as soon as possible," possibly on Thursday, and that there was no reason for an extended delay.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates defended Israel's purported nuclear arms program at a gathering of Middle East leaders in Manama, Bahrain. Asked whether he thought the program posed a threat to the region, Gates said, "No, I do not." The statement was greeted by laughter from a room filled with government officials from Middle Eastern countries. Israel is widely assumed to have the region's only atomic arsenal, but has never confirmed it.

An increasingly bitter dispute between the Bush administration and Congress over war funding took an acrimonious turn Tuesday as Pentagon officials advanced plans to lay off 200,000 civilians because of budget shortfalls, prompting Democratic charges of fear-mongering. President Bush requested $196 billion for war funding in 2008, which would make it the most expensive year to date. House Democrats last week countered with a bill providing partial funding tied to troop withdrawal goals.

More than six months after disclosures of systemic problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other hospitals, the Pentagon's promised fixes are threatened by staff shortages and uncertainty about how best to improve long-term care for troops, according to a report issued Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he was personally engaged in developing contingency plans for a drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq and emphasized that those efforts were a "priority" for the Pentagon. "Such planning is indeed taking place with my active involvement as well as that of senior military and civilian officials and our commanders in the field," Gates wrote in a letter to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday.

The Pentagon is about to embark on a sweeping reorganization of the Naval Investigative Service, the largely civilian Navy law-enforcement arm that was accused by the Defense Department on Thursday of botching the investigation of the Tailhook affair.

Retired Navy Adm. Bobby Ray Inman abruptly withdrew Tuesday as President Clinton's nominee for defense secretary, saying he had been troubled by attacks on his reputation and by "reports" that Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) was preparing to begin a campaign against him. The surprise withdrawal stunned official Washington and the defense community.

The Pentagon said it had appealed a decision by a military judge to dismiss the case of Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan. It is the first time that the appeals process has been used since it was created by Congress in late 2006 to handle cases involving Guantanamo detainees.

For months, the Bush administration has courted Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to gain assent for its plans to build a long-range missile defense system in Eastern Europe. But the focus on Moscow may be misplaced. In the three capitals where legislatures must approve the system before ground is broken -- Washington, Prague and Warsaw -- support is thin and fading.